It’s the dead of winter, making it the perfect time to heat things up by revisiting the story of Firefist. Russell “Rusty” Collins/Firefist, created by Bob Layton and Jackson Guice, has the power to control and manipulate fire, is immune to the effects of fire, and can even turn his body into flames.

He was introduced in X-Factor #1 (February 1986) as a Tulsa, Oklahoma native who joined the US Navy when he was just 16 years old. His mutant power revealed itself in a violent way when he accidently burned a woman, resulting in his arrest. Once he was in prison, a guard suggested using deadly force against him, and Rusty’s powers kicked in again allowing him to escape.

X-Factor learned about Rusty, found him, and offered to help teach him to control his abilities. He went to live with X-Factor and started a relationship with Skids, who was once a Morlock. There was a period when the team lived in the sentient being known as Ship and had to protect its brain from a giant bomb that was set up as a booby trap.

The team joined the X-Terminators and New Mutants to save mutant babies that were being used by Na’stirh to keep a portal open to Limbo. After the babies were saved, Firefist chose to join New Mutants and help new teammate Danielle Moonstar when she lost control of her powers. He was injured by Blob while trying to evade the Freedom Force and was then attacked by soldiers when he was recovering. At that point, the Mutant Liberation Front (MLF) reached out to him, and since they were facing so much opposition, he and Skids decided to join them.

Soon after that, Stryfe brainwashed Rusty and Skids, sending them with an MLF strike team to steal an artifact from a museum. They were stopped by Cable, who had joined the New Mutants after Firefist left, and Rusty was injured again. Rusty and Skids were then kidnapped by the Friends of Humanity, but saved by X-Force and were then invited to a new safe place for mutants called Avalon. There, “the Savior” (who turned out to be Magneto) reversed the brainwashing and when X-Force sought their return, Firefist and Skids chose to joined Magneto’s Acolytes instead.

Holocaust’s body was found in space close to Avalon and Rusty was given the task of watching over his body. Unfortunately, when Holocaust woke up, he killed Rusty. He was resurrected (sort of) by the Transmode Virus to serve Selene as part of the deceased mutant army and was part of an attack on the mutant nation Utopia. Rusty was resurrected for real on Krakoa and rejoined X-Factor only to be killed on the team’s first mission.